Submitted by Diane L. Lister on Wed, 05/11/2025 - 11:00
To save nature, AI needs our help
Have you ever persisted in following your SatNav even when you knew you were going in the wrong direction?
If so, you’ll know that placing all your trust in a machine powered by AI, without also engaging your own intelligence, does not always get you where you want to go.
This is the message that a group of conservation scientists at Cambridge is pushing hard.
Efforts to protect the natural world need all the help they can get - but before embracing AI as the solution, we need discussions about its risks and wider implications.
“Everyone in biodiversity conservation wants to use AI, but many people aren’t that clued up on what it actually is and how it could help their work. AI is a powerful technology that will enable massive advances in biodiversity conservation work. People will need to adapt quickly, but they also need to understand the potential downsides.”
Dr Sam Reynolds, Conservation Science Group, Department of Zoology, and Conservation Research Institute.
“If we give all our attention to inventing new AI tools to fix specific conservation problems - important as these are - we’re missing a trick. AI’s biggest impact on biodiversity is probably going to be through the ways it changes wider society.”
Professor Chris Sandbrook, Department of Geography and Director, Conservation Research Institute.